The Tinner's Corpse

by Bernard Knight

  A stifled sob came from behind the jury, where the dead man’s wife was being comforted by her sisters and son. De Wolfe scowled. He had taken an instant, if illogical, dislike to Knapman. ‘Have you any reason to think that someone would wish one of your men dead?’

  The big, bland face looked back calmly at him. ‘None at all. The fellow was an old and trusted worker. I find it hard to believe he had any enemies.’

  ‘Then might this have been an attack on your tinning operation, an attempt to disrupt your business?’

  Knapman’s outwardly calm expression darkened a little. ‘It certainly did that – I have lost many marks’ worth of production.’

  ‘And who might benefit from that?’ persisted de Wolfe.

  ‘Those who are jealous of my success, perhaps.’ Knapman’s amiability was melting like snow in the sunlight and de Wolfe noticed him throw a malicious glance across the crowd. Following the tin-master’s gaze, he saw a younger man glaring back at him.

  ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘Nothing. I spoke out of turn.’

  ‘I’ll not let you leave it like that. This is a royal enquiry and you must answer my questions, if the answer may have any bearing on the death,’ snapped the coroner.

  Suddenly the man on the other side of the jury pushed his way to the front. He was another large fellow, under thirty years of age, handsome in a beefy way. His strong-featured, tanned face bore a narrow rim of beard, which ran round his jaw-line, and his hair was cut short on his muscular neck up to a circular shelf of thick dark brown thatch. He wore a good tunic of green linen over brown serge breeches, with a new-looking short leather cape around his shoulders.

  ‘I’ll tell you what he means, Crowner,’ he shouted, in a bass voice. ‘The bastard is insinuating that I killed his man to damage his stream-working up there on the Teign. And it’s a damned lie, as he well knows!’

  Walter Knapman, his face purpling with anger, took a step forward and the younger fellow squared up to him, like a pair of cockerels in a farmyard challenge. Gwyn stepped forward, placed a huge hand on each chest and pushed them apart.

  ‘Who are you? And what’s all this about?’ demanded de Wolfe.

  ‘I’ll tell you who he is!’ snarled Knapman. ‘He’s Stephen Acland, the biggest troublemaker on the eastern moor. This young upstart thinks he can displace me as the chief tin-master here.’

  Acland, now red in the face, leaned sideways to shout at his rival past Gwyn’s massive bulk. ‘I can do that without slaying your men, Knapman. You’ve had your way for too long, but I’ll unseat you by fair means. Don’t try blaming me for the death of your overman.’

  ‘And what about the damage to my sluices and troughs up at Scorhill last month?’ yelled Knapman. ‘You had nothing to do with that either, I suppose – two days after I threw you out for having the impudence to want to buy half my holdings.’

  De Wolfe had allowed this angry exchange to go on in case something useful came of it. Now he decided that enough was enough. ‘Stop, you two! Has this anything at all to do with my enquiries into this death?’

  Stephen Acland swung around to face the coroner. ‘Of course not, sir. This is a business matter, which should be aired at the Great Court this week.’

  ‘Then I suggest you pursue it there, rather than screaming at each other like fish-wives before half the town!’ De Wolfe glared at both combatants, who rapidly cooled down in his forbidding presence. He noticed that the attractive woman he had taken to be Mistress Knapman was staring fixedly at Acland, her full lips slightly apart, her face pale and her eyes wide. He could not decide whether her expression was one of apprehension or enrapturement, but he also saw that her husband was now watching her intently and following her gaze across to the younger tin-master.

  Before de Wolfe had a chance to restart his inquest, Walter Knapman grabbed the woman’s arm and pulled her away, almost violently, through the crowd towards the churchyard gate.

  Acland stood stock still, his eyes pinned on the woman, and de Wolfe needed no second sight to decide that Knapman’s antipathy to Acland was not wholly concerned with the tin trade. ‘Acland, have you anything to tell me about this matter?’ he called out, to bring the man’s attention back to the proceedings.

  Slowly the tinner turned to face him, his chin jutting forward obstinately. ‘Nothing useful, Crowner. I knew Henry of Tunnaford well enough, even though he didn’t work for me. He was a good man. Surely his death must have been the work of a madman.’

  ‘But which madman? Have you any suggestions?’

  A wave of whispering rippled through the front ranks of the crowd, especially the jurors, as if they were willing Acland to say something.

  ‘If it’s a madman you’re seeking, then Aethelfrith comes first to mind, Crowner. I would easily believe that he damaged Knapman’s equipment the other day, but I doubt he would kill. Though even murderers have to begin sometime.’

  ‘Tell me about this Aethelfrith – I’ve heard mention of him before.’

  Acland rubbed a hand around his beard, as if delaying an answer. ‘There are other people better able to tell you than I, Crowner – the bailiff and the constable for a start. But I can give you the common knowledge, that he is an old Saxon, of at least three score years, who has a crazy hatred of everything Norman.’

  Now one of the jurors cut in, a tinner, though not one of Henry’s team: ‘He attacked me once, sir, nearly a year past. I was on my own up past Gidleigh, clearing out a fall of mud above the workings. Suddenly this old madman appeared and set about with his staff, screaming that I was stealing a Saxon’s birthright. I clouted him with my shovel and he ran away.’

  There were sniggers from the crowd, which earned them a ferocious glare from de Wolfe. ‘This is no laughing matter. A man is dead.’ He turned back to Stephen Acland. ‘Where can this Aethelfrith be found?’

  The brawny tin-master shrugged. ‘He comes and goes like the mist, sir. I hear he lives somewhere on the high moor, but how he finds food and shelter, I cannot tell. Maybe the bailiff can.’

  The dark head swung slowly to Justin Green, who stood to one side.

  ‘He seems to move around a great deal, Crowner,’ supplied Justin. ‘There are plenty of outlaws up on the moor and they shelter him, I’m sure. Sometimes we have found traces of his living in disused tinners’ huts. So far he’s been more of a nuisance than a danger. We had him for a few months in the Stannary gaol, convicted by their court of damaging a blowing-house one night.’

  ‘Can he be found for questioning?’

  ‘Aethelfrith is as elusive as the wind. A thousand men could comb the moor and never see a hair of him, if he chose to keep low.’

  De Wolfe abandoned the problem and turned to the old altar slab. He motioned to Gwyn to remove the sheet from the body. There was a gasp as the corpse was revealed. Though injury and sudden death were far from unusual, the appearance of this cadaver was particularly gruesome. The crowd gave a hiss of astonishment, and Henry’s widow wailed in anguish as she turned away to sob into her shawl. Her son and her sisters clustered around her to shield her from the sight of her mutilated husband. De Wolfe was neither sadistic nor unfeeling, but public display of the deceased was part of the legal ritual of the inquest and he had had no option but to reveal the horrible circumstances of the death.

  ‘The jury will draw near,’ boomed Gwyn, well versed in the conduct of the inquest. He shepherded the score of men and boys around the bier so that the coroner could conduct the official viewing of the corpse.

  ‘Clerk, record that the King’s coroner and the jury have inspected the decedent,’ grated de Wolfe, as he went to the end of the altar stone and began demonstrating as if he was giving a lecture in a School of Physic.

  ‘You will see that the neck has been severed completely. There is a ragged line of skin all the way around.’ He pointed with his fingers at the gory mess that had dried and blackened in the two days since death. ‘The edges of the wound, though irregul
ar, have been quite sharply cut.’

  He picked up the edge of the skin between thumb and forefinger and stretched out the serrations, now stiffened and curled from drying. ‘This means that a sharp weapon was used – but not too sharp as there is roughening and bruising along the edges. See there.’

  The jury did not particularly wish to see, but they nodded and gaped to satisfy the King’s crowner.

  ‘So something with a moderately good edge, but not as good as a well-honed dagger, was used. Yet it was sharper than the edge of a spade. A good sharp axe would suffice, I suspect.’

  John de Wolfe prided himself on his expertise concerning violence and assault. After more than two decades on a score of battlefields, he had seen every conceivable variety of maiming and death. He motioned to Gwyn, who deftly flicked the sheet back over the remains. ‘There is no more that can be done at present,’ he said. ‘I will adjourn these proceedings but if further information is obtained then they may resume. At present, my verdict is that the deceased was Henry, a tinner of Tunnaford, and that he was of Norman blood. He died of malignant violence on the fourth day of April in the sixth year of the reign of our blessed King Richard, and the manner of his death was murder by a person or persons as yet unknown.’

  He glowered around the ranks of silent onlookers then dropped his gaze to the front row of jurors. ‘If anyone now knows – or comes to know – anything further about this outrage, then they must inform the constable, the bailiff or myself on pain of the most dire penalties if they fail so to do.’

  Swirling his grey cloak around his lean body, de Wolfe loped away towards the gate, leaving the mutilated corpse to the grieving family and the vicar of St Michael the Archangel.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  In which Crowner John is besieged by problems

  By noon, the trio that made up the coroner’s team were splashing their way through the ford across the Exe, just outside Exeter’s West Gate. The unfinished stone bridge was on their left and the rickety old wooden footbridge to their right, both straddling the marshy flats of Exe Island, criss-crossed by muddy ditches.

  John de Wolfe and Gwyn of Polruan were riding side by side, and as their mounts climbed the sloping bank on the city side of the river, de Wolfe broke a long silence. ‘What’s wrong with Thomas today? He looks as if he’s going to his own hanging, not his dinner.’

  Gwyn turned his head to look back at the little clerk, sitting forlornly on his old pony. ‘Walking alongside that fat priest this morning has made him worse,’ grunted the Cornishman, as they jogged up to the city gate.

  ‘Worse than what?’ asked John, who could hardly claim sensitivity among his virtues.

  ‘Thomas is missing his vocation more than ever, poor little sod. He’s desperate to become a proper servant of God again – though why anyone should want to waste their life like that is beyond me.’ In all the years that John had spent in his henchman’s company, he had yet to discover why Gwyn had such an antipathy to the Church.

  ‘The man should be thankful that he’s still alive, after that rape affair in Winchester,’ grated de Wolfe unsympathetically. ‘If the sheriff had got him, instead of the cathedral proctors, he’d have been hanged for sure.’

  ‘The other day, he told me he wished he had been hanged,’ replied Gwyn. ‘Living in the canon’s house in the cathedral close keeps reminding him of what he’s lost, I suppose.’

  ‘Well, don’t let him cut his throat, will you? Miserable little drab that he is, he’s too valuable to me as a clerk. And that reminds me,’ he added cryptically.

  Gwyn looked at his master enquiringly. ‘Reminds you of what?’

  ‘A coroner’s clerk. I’ve got to meet that damned fool Theobald Fitz-Ivo at Rougemont this afternoon. The sheriff wants him elected by the Shire Court tomorrow, God help us!’ With that, the coroner became as glumly silent as Thomas. They climbed the slope of Fore Street to the central crossing of the city at Carfoix, and by the time they passed along the high street to where Martin’s Lane turned off on the right, John’s mood had recovered enough for him to remind the departing Gwyn to be back at the castle by the time of the Vespers bell, around the third hour after noon.

  Gwyn carried straight on, aiming for his family’s hut in St Sidwell’s, just outside the East Gate, while de Wolfe turned into the lane, followed by his despondent clerk. He dismounted a few yards further on, and Andrew the farrier ran out from his stables to take charge of Odin.

  ‘See that the inquest is copied on to another roll for the justices,’ de Wolfe ordered Thomas, who was passing by on his pony. The clerk managed a nod in reply – strangely different from his usual eager, almost obsequious acknowledgement of his master’s instructions.

  De Wolfe stood in the narrow lane for a moment, looking in puzzlement after the plodding horse, but his distraction was short-lived. An all-too-familiar voice grated in his ear. ‘Have you nothing better to do than stare after that lop-sided pervert, John?’

  Matilda had appeared from behind him, enveloped in a dark grey cloak and hood, her white cover-chief and wimple surrounding her face. She looked so much like a nun that he wondered briefly if some special religious fervour was affecting her as well as his clerk. Then he guessed that she had just come from her habitual devotions in the church of St Olave in Fore Street.

  ‘You passed us on the high street without a word,’ she complained, gesturing to the obnoxious Lucille, who always reminded de Wolfe of a skinny rabbit, with her large ears and protruding teeth.

  ‘In that press of people, you could hardly expect me to recognise you from the back, wrapped in that great mantle,’ muttered her husband.

  Matilda waddled past him to their front door. ‘You’d easily recognise certain other wenches, with or without their clothes,’ she spat out.

  To John’s relief, both women disappeared down the side passage to the backyard to take the outside stairs up to Matilda’s solar. He reckoned that he had half an hour to sit in peace by his hearth and drink a quart of ale, while Lucille fussed over his wife’s clothes and primped her hair.

  As he fondled Brutus’s smooth head while he waited for Mary to bring him his drink, the thought of ale gave him a sudden stab of guilt over his enforced absences lately from the Bush Inn. He had only seen Nesta once in the past five days, and after his long trips away from Exeter during the past month, he hoped that his mistress was not feeling too neglected. Maybe the installation of Fitz-Ivo might be bearable, he thought, if it gave him more time for dalliance at the Bush. And maybe he would even find time to get down to Stoke-in-Teignhead to see his family. With another twinge of guilt, the thought that Dawlish was on the road to Stoke came into his head – Dawlish, the village where the delectable Hilda lived.

  The aspiring new coroner for the north of the county was already in the sheriff’s chamber when de Wolfe arrived. The obese knight was squeezed into a leather-backed folding chair, which looked in imminent danger of collapse as he leaned back dangerously when John entered.

  Theobald Fitz-Ivo was obviously slightly drunk after washing down his dinner with too much wine. His circular face, which bore a rim of blond beard that matched his close-cropped hair, was flushed a bright pink and he greeted de Wolfe with unctuous familiarity. ‘Ah, John! I’ve come to your rescue. Richard here has been telling me how hard pressed you’ve been lately.’

  Even the sheriff, who had championed Fitz-Ivo, winced at the man’s slurred heartiness.

  ‘You understand what’s involved, do you?’ growled de Wolfe, propping himself against the stone fireplace where a few logs glowed feebly. ‘This job is no sinecure. You have to get out and about, investigating a whole host of matters.’

  Fitz-Ivo waved a hand with unsteady airiness. ‘I’ll soon get into the swing of it, John. My bailiff William is good at reading and writing – never had time for it, myself.’

  The coroner sighed. ‘He had better be good, for everything must be recorded on the rolls for presentation to the King’s justices at the Eyre
of Assize – and the General Eyre, if it ever arrives in Exeter in our lifetime.’

  The podgy knight from Frithelstock looked at him blankly. John hoped that the complexity of a coroner’s functions was dawning on Fitz-Ivo, but he had his doubts. ‘You do understand what your duties will be, I trust?’

  ‘Oh, it’s mostly looking at corpses and taking presentments, eh?’

  De Wolfe groaned inwardly. It would be easier to carry on doing all the work himself than to instruct this dolt – and, no doubt, clear up the mess he was inevitably going to make. He walked across to the sheriff’s heavy table and perched on one corner to stare down at the rubicund Theobald. He decided that the fool should be told a few basic truths. ‘I’d better start at the beginning! The essential duty is the keeping of the pleas of the Crown.’

  He was rewarded with a glassy stare from the pale blue eyes that looked back from the red face, which carried an even redder, bulbous nose laced by fine purple veins.

  ‘What exactly does that mean, eh?’

  The scowl on de Wolfe’s dark face deepened. ‘It’s what gives the office its name, for God’s sake!’ he snarled, in exasperation. ‘Why d’you think we’re called coroners? From custos placitorum coronas, keeper of the pleas of the Crown! But we keep them, not hold them. We’re not judges.’

  Theobald made an effort to comprehend. ‘So what does keeping entail, John?’

  ‘It means directing the trial of all serious crimes and legal suits to the royal courts, rather than letting them be dealt with by the burgess court, the sheriff’s Shire Court or the manorial courts.’

  ‘Damn nonsense!’ cut in the sheriff, who could restrain himself no longer. ‘Our courts have managed well enough for centuries.’

  Richard de Revelle was in a difficult position: on the one hand he wanted to put John down by appointing Fitz-Ivo, so limiting his power over the whole county, yet on the other he disagreed fundamentally with the new post of coroner, which curtailed his own freedom to practise autocracy and corruption.